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THE NEGRO 



AND 



THE NATION 



BY 



«& 



HUBERT H. HARRISON 



Cosmo- Advocate Publishing Co. 

2305 Seventh Avenue 

New York 




♦ •* 






PREFACE 



.6 I 

./yz 2 



This little book is made up of articles contributed 
several years ago to radical newspapers and magazines 
like The Call, The Truth-Seeker, Zukunft, and The Inter- 
national Socialist Review. They are re-published in this 
form, partly to preserve a portion of the author's early 
work, but mainly because they help to throw into strong 
relief the present situation of the Negro in present day 
America, and to show how that situation re-acts upon the 
mind of the Negro. That is the great need of the Negro 
at this time. 

Some time in the near future I hope to write a little 
book on the New Negro which will set forth the aims and 
ideals of the new Manhood Movement among American 
Negroes rich has grown out of the international crusade 
"for democracy — for the right of those* who submit to 
authority to have A VOICE in their own government" — 
as President Wilson so sincerely puts it. 

Because I wish this Utile book to have as large a 
circulation as possible among Negroes and white people, 
I have preferred publication at a popular price to the 
doubtful advantage of having a prominent publisher's 
name at the foot of the title-page. The present edition 
consists of five thousand copies^ When it is sold off a 
second edition Avill be issued. & 



HUBERT H. HARRISON 
New York, August, 1917. 



A- AUG 1? «» 




THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



Providence, according to Mr. Kipling, has been 
pleased to place upon the white man's shoulders 
the tremendous burden of regulating the atiairs ot 
men of all other colors, who, for the purpose of his 
argument, are backward and undeveloped— halt 
devil and half child." When one considers that of the 
sixteen hundred million people living upon this 
earth, more than twelve hundred million are col- 
ored, this seems a truly staggering burden. 

But it does not seem to have ocurred to the 
proponents of this pleasant doctrine that the shoe 
may be upon the other foot so far as the other 
twelve hundred million are concerned. It is easy to 
maintain an ex parte argument, and as long as we 
do not ask the other side to state their case our 
own arguments will appear not only convincing but 
conclusive. But in the court of common sense this 
method is not generally allowed .ind a case is not 
considered closed until both parties have been heard 
from. 

I have no doubt but that the colored peoples of 



NOTE: This article and the next were contributed 
to the International Socialist Review in 1912 while the 
author was a member of the Socialist Party. He has since 
left it (but has joined no other party) partly because, 
holding as he does by the American doctrine of "Race 
First," he wished to put himself in a position to wont 
among his people along lines of hi3 own choosing. 



n 




THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



the world will have a word or two to say in their 
own defense. In this article I propose to put the 
case of the black man in America, not by any elab- 
orate arguments, but by the presentation of certain 
facts which will probably speak for themselves. 

I am not speaking here of the evidences of Ne- 
gro advancement, nor even making a plea for 
justice. I wish merely to draw attention to certain 
pitiful facts. This is all that is necessary — at pres- 
ent. For I believe that those facts will furnish such 
a damning indictment of the Negro's American 
over-lord as must open the eyes of the world. The 
sum total of these facts and of what they suggest 
constitute a portion of the black man's burden in 
America. Not all of it, to be sure, but quite enough 
to make one understand what the Negro problem 
is. For the sake of clarity I shall arrange them in 
four groups : political, economic, educational and 
social. 

I— Political. 

In a republic all the adult male natives are citi- 
zens. If in a given community some are citizens 
and others subjects, then your community is not a 
republic. It may call itself so. But that is another 
matter. Now, the essence of citizenship is the ex- 
ercise of political rights ; the right to a voice in 
government, to say what shall be done with your 
taxes, and the right to express your own needs. If 
you are denied these rights you are not a citizen. 
Well, in sixteen southern states there are over 
eight million Negroes in this anomalous position. 

4 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



Of course, many good people contend that they 
may be unfit to exercise the right of suffrage. If 
that is so, then who is fit to exercise it for them? 
This argument covers a fundamental fallacy in our 
prevailing conception of the function of the ballot. 
We think that it is a privilege to be conferred for 
"fitness." But it isn't. It is an instrument by which 
the people of a community express their will, their 
wants and their needs. And all those are entitled 
to use it who have wants, needs and desires that 
are worth consideration by society. If they are 
not worth considering, then be brutally frank about 
it; say so, and establish a protectorate over them. 
But have done with the silly cant of "fitness." Peo- 
ple vote to express their wants. Of course, they 
will make mistakes. They are not gods. But they 
have a right to make their own mistakes — the Ne- 
groes. All other Americans have. That is why 
they had Ruef in San Francisco, and still have 
Murphy in New York. 

But the American republic says, in effect, 
that eight million Americans shall be political 
serfs. Now, this might be effected with 
decency by putting it into the national constitution. 
But it isn't there. The national constitution has 
two provisions expressly penalizing this very thing. 
Yet the government — the President, Congress, the 
Supreme Court — wink at it. This is not what we 
call political decency. But, just the same, it is 
done. How is it done? By fraud and force. Till- 
man of South Carolina has told in the United States 

5 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



Senate how the ballot was taken from Negroes by 
shooting them— that is, by murder. But murder is 
not necessary now. In certain southern states in 
order to vote a man must have had a grandfather 
who voted before Negroes were freed. In others, 
he must be able to interpret and understand any 
clause in the Constitution, and a white registration 
official decides whether he does understand. And 
the colored men of states like Virginia, North Car- 
olina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississsippi and Louisi- 
ana who meet such tests as those states provide 
are disfranchised by the "white primary" system. 
According to this system only those who vote at 
the primaries can vote at the general elections. 
But the South Carolina law provides that : "At this 
election only white voters. . . and such Negroes 
as voted the Democratic ticket in 1876 and have 
voted the Democratic ticket continuously since. . 
may vote." Of course, they know that none of 
them voted that ticket in 1876 or have done so con- 
tinuously since. In Georgia the law says that : "All 
white electors who have duly registered . 
irrespective of past political affiliations 
are hereby declared qualified and are invited to par- 
ticipate in said primary election. 

Under the new suffrage law of Mr. 
Booker T. Washington's state of Alabama. 
Montgomery county, which has 53.000 Negroes, 
disfranchises all but one hundred of them. 
In 1908 the Democrats of West Virginia declared in 
their platform that the United States Constitution 
should be so amended so as to disfranchise all the 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



Negroes of the country. In December, 1910, the lower 
house of the Texas legislature, by a vote of 51 to 
34, instructed its federal Senators and Congress- 
men to work for the repeal of the two amendments 
to the national constitution which confer the right 
of suffrage upon Negroes. But the funniest pro- 
posal in that direction came from Georgia, where J. 
J. Slade proposed an amendment to the state con- 
situation to the effect that colored men should be 
allowed to vote only if two chaste white women 
would swear that they would trust them in the 
dark. But, however it has been effected, whether 
by force or fraud, by methods wise or otherwise, 
the great bulk of the Negroes of America are po- 
litical pariahs to-day. When it is remembered that 
they once had the right of suffrage, that it was giv- 
en them, not upon any principle of abstract right, 
but as a means of protection from the organised 
ill-will of their white neighbors, that that ill-will is 
now more effectively organized and in possession 
of all the powers of the state,— it can be seen at a 
glance that this spells subjection certain and com- 
plete. 



Political rights are the only sure protection 
and guarantee of economic rights. Everv fool 
knows this. And yet, here in America to-day we 
have people who tell Negroes that they ought not 
to agitate for the ballot so long as they stilfhave a 
chance to get work in the south. And Negro lead- 
ers, hired by white capitalists who want cheap la- 

7 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



bor-power, still continue to mislead both their own 
and other people. The following facts will demon- 
strate the economic insecurity of the Negro in the 
South. 

Up to a few years ago systematic peonage was 
wide-spread in the South. Now, peonage is slavery 
unsanctioned by law. In its essence it is more de- 
grading than mere chattel slavery. Any one who 
doubts this may look to modern Mexico for proofs. 
This peonage in the South had reduced many black 
men to slavery. And it isn't stamped out yet. It 
was on January 3, 191 1, that the Supreme Court, in 
the case of Alonzo Bailey, declared unconstitutional 
the Alabama peonage law, which had been upheld 
by the state Supreme Bench. About the same time 
W. S. Harlan, a nephew of the late Justice Harlan 
of the United States Supreme Court, andmanagerof 
a great lumber and turpentine trust, doing business 
in Florida and Alabama, was sentenced to eighteen 
months' imprisonment and fined $5,000 for peon- 
age. He has since been pardoned and had his fine 
remitted by President Taft. 

One of the forms of this second slavery is the 
proprietary system, according to which the Negro 
laborer or tenant farmer must get his supply at the 
proprietor's store — and he gets it on credit. The 
accounts are cooked so that the Negro is always in 
debt to the modern slave-holder. Some of them 
spend a life-time working out an original debt of 
five or ten dollars. 

But peonage isn't all. The professional south- 



8 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



erner is always declaring that whatever else the 
south may not do for the Negro it supplies him 
with work. It does — when he works for some one 
else. When he works for himself it is very often 
different. For instance, there was the Georgia 
Railroad strike of May, 1909. The Negro firemen 
were getting from fifty cents to a dollar a day less 
than the white firemen, they had to do menial work, 
and could not be promoted to be engineers. They 
could be promoted, however, to the best runs by 
the rule of seniority. But the white firemen, who 
had fixed the economic status of the black firemen, 
objected to even this. They went on strike and 
published a ukase to the people of the state in 
which they said: "The white people of this state 
refuse to accept social equality." 

On the eighth of March, 1911, the firemen of the 
Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific Railroad 
did the same thing. In the attacks made on the 
trains by them and their sympathizers many Negro 
firemen were killed. Occurences of this sort are 
increasing in frequency and they have a certain 
tragic significance. It means that the Negro, 
stripped of the ballot's protection, holds the right 
to earn his bread at the mere sufferance of the 
whites. It means that no black man shall hold a 
job that any white man wants. And that, not in 
the South alone. There is the case of the Pavers' 
Union of New York City. The colored pavers, dur- 
ing the panic of 1907, got behind in their dues. The 
usual period granted expired on Friday. On Mon- 

9 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



day they sent in their dues in full to the national 
organization. The treasurer refused to receive the 
dues and at once got out an injunction against 
them. This injunction estopped them from ap- 
pealing to the National Executive Committee or to 
the national convention. They are still fighting 
the case. 

In January 191 1 the several walking del- 
egates of the Painters' Plumbers', Masons,' Car- 
penters', Steam Fitters', Plasterers' and Tinsmiths' 
Unions compelled the Thompson & Starrett Con- 
struction Co., the second largest firm of contract- 
ors in New York, to get,, rid of the colored cold 
painters who were engaged on the annex to 
Stearns' department store. They would not admit 
them to membership in the union ; they merely de- 
clared that colored men would not be allowed to do 
this work. And these are the same men who de- 
nounce Negro strik-breakers. They want them 
out of the unions and also want them to fight for 
the unions. Presumably they would have them 
eating air-balls in the meanwhile. 

In February 191 1 the New York Cab Company 
was dropping its Negro cab drivers, because, it said, 
its patrons demanded it. In November 191 1 the 
white chauffeurs of New York were trying to ter- 
rorize the colored chauffeurs by a system of sabot- 
age in the garage, because they, too, believed that 
these jobs were white men's jobs. 

It is but a short step from the denial of the 
right to work to the denial of the right to own. In 

10 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



fact, the two are often linked together, as in the 
next ease. In the latter part of 1910, land specula- 
tors in Hominy Okla., sold some land for cotton 
rms to Negroes. The Negroes paid for this land, 
took possession, and were getting along splendidly 
when— "the local whites protested." "Night-rid- 
ers (i. e., Ku Klux) around Hominy, several days 
before, served notice that all Negroes must leave 
the town at once, and to emphasize the warning 
they exploded dynamite in the neighborhood of 
Negro houses." So the Negroes fled, fearing for 
their lives. At Baxterville, Miss., the same thing 
happened in March 1912. In November 1910, a 
colored man named Matthew Anderson in Kansas 
City was having a fine $5,000 house built. But the 
jealousy of the white neighbors prevented its com- 
pletion. It was blown up by dynamite when it had 
been almost finished. In Warrenton, Ga., notice 
was sent to three colored men and one widow, who 
had prospered greatly in business, to the effect that 
they must leave immediately because the white 
people of Warrenton "were not a-goin' to stand for 
rich niggers." One of them has been forced to sell 
out his business at a loss. Another never answers 
a knock and never leaves his house by the front 
door. ^ All through these things Mr. Washington 
told his race that if it would work hard, get proper- 
ty and be useful to a community it would not need 
to strive for a share in the government ! 

Ill— EDUCATIONAL. 
EDUCATION is the name which we give to 

11 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 

that process of equipment and training which, in 
our day, society gives the individual to prepare him 
for fighting the battle of life. We do not confer it 
as a privilege, but it is given on behalf of society 
for society's own protection from the perils of ig- 
norance and incompetence. It is a privilege to 
which ever}' member of society is entitled. For 
without some equipment of this sort the individual 
is but half a man, handicapped in the endeavor to 
make a living. Here in America, we subscribe to 
the dangerous doctrine that twelve million of the 
people should receive the minimum of education. 
And in order to reconcile ourselves to this doctrine, 
we deck it in the garments of wisdom. Because of 
the serf idea in American life, we say that the Ne- 
gro shall have a serf's equipment and no more. It 
is the same idea that the aristocracy of Europe 
evolved when the workers demanded that their 
children should be trained better than they them- 
selves had been. "Why", said the masters, "if we 
give your children schooling they will be educated 
out of their station in life. What should the son 
of a carpenter need to know of Euclid or Virgil? 
He should learn his father's vocation that he may 
be well equipped to serve in that station of life 
into which it has pleased God to call him. We 
need more plowmen than priests, more servants 
than savants." 

In our own land, when Negroes demand educa- 
tion, we say, "Why, surely, give them industrial 
education. Your race has a great opportunity — 

12 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



to make itself useful. It needs trained craftsmen 
and workers and, perhaps, a few parsons. Teach 
your sons and daughters to work. That is enough." 
And we dexterously select leaders for them who 
will administer the soothing syrup of this old idea 
with deftness and dispatch. The General Educa- 
tion Board which disburses millions of dollars an- 
nually in the South for education has, so far, given 
to forty-one Negro schools the sum of $464,015. 
Only in two instances has any money been given 
to a real college. Practically all of it went to the 
labor-caste schools. Why? Because the dark 
degradation of the Negro must be lightened by no 
\ray of learning. That would never do. We need 
them as "hewers of wood and drawers of water." 
And in the meanwhile, this is what the richest 
country on earth offers to ruthlessly exploited peo- 
ple as a training for life : 

Before the Twelfth Annual Conference for Ed- 
ucation in the South (1910) Mr. Charles L. Coon, 
superintendent of schools in North Carolina, read 
a paper on Negro Education in the South. His in- 
vestigation extended over eleven states : Virginia, 
\North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas 
and Tennessee. In these states the Negroes make 
up 40.1 per cent of the population, but receive only 
14.8 per cent of the school fund. He showed that 
even if the school fund as disbursed were appor- 
tioned to each race according to taxes paid the col- 
ored people of Virginia should receive $507,305 in- 

13 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



stead of the $482,228 which they now receive ; in 
North Carolina they should get $429,127 instead of 
$402,658, and in Georgia $647,852 instead of $506,- 
170. So that these three states expend for Negro 
education $93,278 less than what the Negroes them- 
selves pay for — and that sum is contributed by Ne- 
)groes to the white children of the state ! 

But, as a matter of fact, in no modern country 
is education made to depend upon the tax-paying 
power of the parents. If that were so, the children 
of 40,000,000 American proletarians would live and 
die without schooling. So that the case is really 
much worse than it seems. 

South Carolina spent in 1910 $10.34 for the ed- 
ucation of each white child and $1.70 for the educa- 
tion of each colored child. In Lawrence county 
the state gave to each colored child 97 cents worth 
of education that year ; in Lexington county, 90 
cents ; in Bamberg, 89 cents ; in Saluda, 68 cents, 
and in Calhoun, 58 cents worth. The smallest sum 
spent on a white child for education that year was 
$4.03. In Georgia it was quite as bad. One county 
of this state owned 19 of the 27 school houses for 
Negroes. The valuation of the entire 19 was 
$2,500; that is, $131.58 for each school house for 
Negroes !The annual cost of the education of a Ne- 
gro child in six counties of this civilised ste ^s 
39 cents, Meanwhile the whites of Baltimore were 
protesting against the building of a new Negro 
school ! In Louisiana the report of the Depart- 
ment of Education shows that the average monthly 

14 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



salary of white male teachers is 75.29, while that of 
colored male teachers is $34.25. The average 
monthly salary of white female teachers is $50.80 
and that of the colored female teachers is $28.67. 
The average length of the annual school term for 
white children is eight months and a quarter; for 
icolored children, four months and a half. 

In Wilcox County, Alabama, where there are 
2,000 white children and 10,758 colored children, 
$32, 660.48 is devoted to education. Of this amount 
the 10,758 colored children receive one-fourth — $6,- 
532.09, or sixty cents each per annum — while the 
2,000 white children receive the remaining four- 
fifths— $26,128.13, or about $13 each per annum. 
Mr. Booker Washington, who lives in this state 
sends his own children to the best colleges and to 
Europe while advising the rest of his people to 
"make your condition known to the white people 
of the state." Now, if education— of any sort— is 
a training for life, is it not evident here that black 
children are being robbed of their chance in life? 
W r hy? Is it to be supposed that their fathers are 
so stupid as to allow this if they could vote 
their own needs? Yet Mr. Washington decries the 
agitation for the ballot as unwise and never loses 
an opportunity . of sneering at these who see 
something of value in it. But to continue 
The number of white children of schooi 
age in Alabama is 364,266; the number 
ot colored children of school age is 311,552. But 
the teachers of the white children receive in sala- 

15 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



ries 82404,062.54, while the teachers of the colored 
children receive $202,251.13. The value of all 
schoolhouses, sites and furniture for white children 
is $6,503,019.57; for colored children, $273,147.50. 

In South Carolina there are 316,007 Negro 
childen of school age and 201,868 white children; 
but the state spends on its Negro children $368,802, 
and on its white children Si. 684,976. Thus does 
America keep knowledge from Negroes. She is 
afraid of the educated black man. Of such are the 
people who taunt Negroes with ignorance. 

IV. — Social. 

When a group has been reduced to serfdom, 
political and economic, its social status become 
fixed by that fact. And so we find that in " the home 
of the' free and the land of the brave" Negroes 
must not ride in the same cars in a train as white 
people. On street-cars, certain sections are set 
apart for them. They may not eat in public places 
where white people eat nor drink at the same bar. 
They may not go to the same church (although 
they are foolish enough to worship the same god) 
as white people ; they may not die in the same hos- 
pital nor be buried in the same grave-yard. So far 
as we know, the segregation ends here. 

But why is segregation necessary? Because 
white Americans are afraid that their inherent su- 
periority may not. after all, be so very evident 
either to the Negro or to other people. They, 
therefore, find it necessary to enact it into law. So 
we had the first Ghetto legislation in an American 

16 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



nation last year, in Baltimore. Hard on the heels 
of this followed legislative proposals along the 
same line in Richmond Va., Kansas City, Mo., St. 
Louis, Mo., and Birmingham, Ala. In Memphis, 
L-iiii. i\egroes pay taxes ior public parks which 
they are not allowed to enter. A year ago they 
petitioned for a Negro park and were about to get 
'it when 500 white citizens protested against it. 
That settled it with the park. 

But discrimination goes even further and de- 
clares that Negroes shall not possess even their 
lives if any white perons should want them. And 
so we have the institution called the lynching-bee. 
The professional southerner seems to love a lie 
dearly and continues to assert that Negroes are 
lynched for rape committed upon white women. 
Why not? It is perfectly American. If you want 
to kill a dog, call it mad; if you want to silence a 
man, call him an Anarchist, and if you want to kill 
a black man, call him a rapist. But let us see what 
the facts actually are. 

In the two decades from 1884 to 1904 there 
were 2,875 lynchings in the United States. Of 
these 87 per cent, or 2,499 occurred in the South. 
The national total was grouped as follows : 

1. For alleged and attempted criminal assault, 

i. e., rape 564 

2. For assault and murder and for complicity 138 

3. For murder 1,277 

4. For theft, burglary and robbery 326 

5. For arson < . . . 106 



17 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



6. For race-prejudice (?) 94 

7. For unknown reasons 134 

8. For simple assault 18 

9. For insulting whites 18 

10. For making threats 16 

The causes for the remainder wer : slander, 
miscegenation, informing, drunkenness, fraud, 
voodooism, violation of contract, resisting arrest, 
elopement, train wrecking, poisoning stock, refusing 
to give evidence, testifying against whites, politi- 
cal animosity, disobedience of quarantine regula- 
tions, passing counterfeit money, introducing 
smallpox, concealing criminals, cutting levees, kid- 
napping, gambling, riots, seduction, incest, and 
forcing a child to steal. 

Yes, there are courts in the South; but 
not for black people — n ot when the mob 
chooses to relieve civilization of the onus of 
law and order. At Honeapath, S. G, a Negro was 
lynched in November 191 1, charged, of course, with 
"the usual crime." The charge had not been prov- 
en, or invetsigated ; but the man was lynched. The 
howling mob which did him to death was composed 
of "prominent citizens'' who had made up automo- 
bile parties to ride to the affair. Among those 
present was the dis-honorable Joshua Ashley, a 
member of the state legislature. He and his friends 
cut off the man's fingers as souvenirs and were 
proud of their work. Why shouldn't they? You 
see, it helps to keep "niggers" in their place. And 
then, besides, isn't this a white man's country? 

18 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



Gov. Blease of South Carolina was also proud of 
the event and said that instead of stopping the 
horrible work of the mob he would have resigned 
ms office to lead it. In Okemeah, Oklahoma, last 
June, a band of white beasts raped a Negro woman 
and then lynched her and her fourteen-year-old son 
Nothing has been done to them. And it is not that 
the facts are unknown. At Durant, Okla., and else- 
where, tne savages have posed around their victim 
to nave their pictures taken. One man, from Ala- 
bama sent to the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, of 
Brooklyn, N. Y., a post-card (by mail) bearing a 
photograph of such a group. "This is the way we 
treat them down here," he writes, and, after prom- 
ising to put Mr. Holmes' name on his mailing list 
declares that they will have one, at least, each 
month. 

In Washington, Ga., Charles S. Holinshead, a 
wealthy white planter, raped the wife of T B 
r, a decent, respectable Negro. As his wife 
returned to him dishevelled and bleeding from the 
outrage perpetrated on her, Walker went to Hol- 
mshead's store and shot him dead. For this he 
as tried and condemned and, while the judge was 
pronouncing sentence, Holinshead's brother 
shot Walker m the court-room. They held his 
■id up while the judge finished the sentence, 
inen he was taken out and lynched— not executed 
►thing was done to the other Holinshead. 

The New York Evening Post, on Octoer 23rd 
said in an editorial that "there has hardly been a 

19 



THE BLACK MAN'S BURDEN 



single authenticated case in a decade of the Ne- 
groes rising against the whites, despite the grow- 
ing feeling, among them that there should be some 
retaliation since no tribunal will punish lynchers or 
enforce the law." I am glad that the Post noticed 
this. I had begun to notice it myself. When 
President Roosevelt discussed lynching some 
years ago, he severely reprobated the Negro for 
their tendency to shield their "criminals" and or- 
dered them to go out and help hunt them down. 
So was insult added to injury. 

But, putting my own opinion aside, here are 
the facts as I have seen them. In the face of 
these facts, the phrase, "the white man's burden," 
soui.ds like a horrid mockery. 



:o : 



20 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



1. Economic Status Of The Negro 



The ten million Negroes of America form a 
group that is more essentially proletarian than any 
other American group. In the first place the an- 
cestors of this group were brought here with the 
very definite understanding that they were to be 
ruthlessly exploited. And they were not allowed 
any choice in the matter. Since they were brought 
here as chattels their social status was fixed by 
that fact. In every case that we know of where a 
group has lived by exploiting another group, it has 
despised that group which it has put under subjec- 
tion. And the degree of contempt has always been 
in direct proportion to the degree of exploitation- 

Inasmuch then, as the Negro was at one peri- 
od the most thoroughly exploited of the American 
proletariat, he was the most thoroughly despised. 
That group which exploited and despised him, be- 
ing the most powerful section of the ruling class, 
was able to diffuse its own necessary contempt of 
the Negro first among the other sections of the 
ruling class, and afterwards among all other class- 
es of Americans. For the ruling class has always de- 
termined what the social ideals and moral ideas of 
society should be ; and this explains how race pre- 
judice was disseminated until all Americans are 
supposed to be saturated with it. Race prejudice, 

21 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



then, is the fruit of economic subjection and a fixed 
inferior economic status. It is the reflex of a so- 
cial caste system. That caste system in America 
today is what we roughly refer to as the Race 
Problem, and it is thus seen that the Negro prob- 
lem is essentiallly an economic problem with its 
roots in slavery past and present. 

Notwithstanding the fact that it is usually kept 
out of public discussion, the bread-and-butter side 
of this problem is easily the most important. The 
Negro worker gets less for his work — thanks to 
exclusion from the craft unions — than any other 
worker ; he works longer hours as a rule and under 
worse conditions than any other worker, and his 
rent in any large city is much higher than that 
which the white worker pays for the same tene- 
ment- In short, the exploitation of the Negro 
worker is keener than that of any group of white 
workers in America. Now, the mission of the So- 
cialist Party is to free the working class from ex- 
ploitation, and since the Negro is the most ruth- 
lessly exploited working class group in America, 
the duty of the party to champion his cause is as 
clear as day. This is the crucial test of Socialism's 
sincerity and therein lies the value of this point of 
view — Socialism and the Negro- 

2. The Need of Socialist Propaganda. 

So far, no particular effort has been made to 
carry the message of Socialism to these people. 
All the rest of the poor have had the gospel preach- 
ed to them, for the party has carried on special 

22 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



propaganda work among the Poles, Slovaks, Finns, 
Hungarians and Lithuanians. Here are ten million 
Americans, all proletarians, hanging on the ragged 
edge of the impending class conflict. Left to them- 
selves they may become as great a menace to our 
advancing army as is the army of the unemployed, 
and for precisely the same reason: they can be 
used against us, as the craft unions have begun to 
find out- Surely we should make some effort to 
enlist them under our banner that they may swell 
our ranks and help to make us invincible. And we 
must do this for the same reason that is impelling 
organized labor to adopt an all-inclusive policy; 
because the other policy results in the artificial 
breeding of scabs. On grounds of common sense 
and enlightened self-interest it would be well for 
the Socialist party to begin to organize the Ne- 
groes of America in reference to the class struggle- 
The capitalists of America are not waiting. Al- 
ready they have subsidized Negro leaders, Negro 
editors, preachers and politicians to build up in the 
breasts of the black people those sentiments which 
will make them subservient to their will. For they 
recognize the value (to them) of cheap labor power 
and they know that if they can succeed in keeping 
one section of the working class down they can 
use that section to keep other sections down too. 

3. The Negro's Attitude Toward Socialism. 

If the Socialist propaganda among Negroes is 
be effectively carried on, the members and lead- 

23 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



ers of the party must first understand the Negro's 
attitude toward Socialism- That attitude finds its 
first expression in ignorance. The mass of the 
Negro people in America are ignorant of what So- 
cialism means. For this they are not much to 
blame- Behind the veil of the color line none of 
the great world-movements for social betterment 
have been able to penetrate. Sine j it is not yet the 
easiest task to get the white American worker — 
with all his superior intellect — to see Socialism, it 
(is but natural to expect that these darker workers 
to whom America denies knowledge should still be 
in ignorance as to its aims and objects. 

Besides, the Negroes of America — those of 
them who think — are suspicious of Socialism as of 
everything that comes from the white people of 
America. They have seen that every movement 
ffor the extension of democracy here has broken 
down as soon as it reached the color line. Political 
democracy declared that "all men are created 
equal," meant only all white men. The Christian 
church found that the brotherhood of man did not 
include God's bastard children. The public school 
system proclaimed that the school house was the 
backbone of democracy — "for white people only," 
and the civil service says that Negroes must keep 
their place — at the bottom. So that they can hard- 
ly be blamed for looking askance at any new gospel 
of freedom- Freedom to them has been like one of 
"those juggling fiends. 

24 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



(That palter with us in a double sense ; 
That keep the word of promise to our ear, 
And break it to our hope." 

In this connection, some explanation of the 
former political solidarity of those Negroes who 
were voters may be of service- Up to six years 
ago the one great obstacle to the political progress 
of the colored people was their sheep-like alle- 
giance to the Republican party. They were 
taught to believe that God had raised up a peculiar 
race of men called Republicans who had loved the 
slaves so tenderly that they had taken guns in their 
hands and rushed on the ranks of the southern 
slaveholders to free the slaves; that this race of 
men was still in existence, marching under the ban- 
ner of the Republican party and showing their 
great love for Negroes by appointing from six to 
sixteen near-Negroes to soft political snaps. Today 
that great political superstition is falling to pieces 
before the advance of intelligence among Negroes. 
They begin to realize that they were sold out by 
the Republican party in 1876; that in the last 
twenty-five years lynchings have increased, dis- 
franchisement has spread all over the south and 
"jim-crow" cars run even into the national capital 
1 with the continuing consent of a Republican con- 
gress, a Republican Supreme Court and Republican 
presidents. 

Ever since the Brownsville affair, but more 
clearly since Taft declared and put in force the pol- 
icy of pushing out the few near-Negro officehold- 

25 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



ers, the rank and file have come to see that the 
Republican party is a great big sham. Many went 
over to the Democratic party because, as the Am- 
sterdam News puts it, "they had nowhere else to 
go." Twenty years ago the colored men who 
joined that party were ostracized as scalawags and 
crooks — which they probably were. But today, 
the defection to the Democrats of such men as 
Bishop Waiters, Wood, Carr and Langston — whose 
uncle was a colored Republican congressman from 
Virginia — has made the colored democracy respect- 
able and given quite a tone to political heterodoxy- 
All this loosens the bonds of their allegiance 
and breaks the bigotry of the last forty years. But 
of this change in their political view-point the 
white world knows nothing- The two leading 

Negro newspapers are subsidized by the same po- 
litical pirates who hold the title-deeds to the hand- 
ful of hirelings holding office in the name of the 
Negro race. One of these papers is an organ of 
Mr. Washington, the other pretends to be inde- 
pendent — that is, it must be "bought" on the in- 
stallment plan, and both of them are in New York. 
Despite this "conspiracy of silence" the Negroes 
are waking up ; are beginning to think for them- 
selves ; to look with more favor on "new doctrines." 

And herein lies the open opportunity of the Social- 
ist party. If the work of spreading Socialist prop- 
aganda is taken to them now, their ignorance of it 
can be enlightened and their suspicions removed. 

26 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



The Duty of The Socialist Party. 

I think that we might embrace the opportunity 
of taking the matter up at the coming national con- 
vention- The time is ripe for taking a stand 
against the extensive disfranchisement of the Ne- 
gro in violation of the plain provisions of the na- 
tional constitution. In view of the fact that the 
last three amendments to the constitution contain 
the clause, "Congress shall have power to enforce 
this article by appropriate legislation," the party 
will not be guilty of proposing anything worse 
than asking the government to enforce its own 
"law and order." If the Negroes, or any other 
section of the working class in America, is to be 
deprived of the ballot, how can they participate 
with us in the class struggle? How can we pre- 
tend to be a political party if we fail to see the 
significance of this fact? 

Besides, the recent dirty diatribes against the 
Negro in a Texas paper, which is still on our na- 
tional list of Socialist papers ; the experiences of 
Mrs. Theresa Malkiel in Tennessee where she was 
prevented by certain people from addressing a 
meeting of Negroes on the subject of Socialism, 
and certain other exhibitions of the thing called 
southernism, constitute the challenge of caste. Can 
we ignore this challenge? I think not. We could 
hardly afford to have the taint of "trimming" on 
the garments of the Socialist party. It is danger- 
ous — doubly dangerous now, when the temper of 
the times is against such "trimming." Besides it 

27 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



would be futile. If it is not met now it must be 
met later when it shall have grown stronger. Now, 
when we can cope with it, we have the issue squar- 
ly presented: Southernism or Socialism — which? 
Is it to be the white half of the working class 
against the black half, or all the working class? 
Can we hope to triumph over capitalism with one- 
half of the working class against us? Let us set- 
tle these questions now — for settled they must be. 

The Negro and Political Socialism. 
\ The power of the voting proletariat can be 
made to express itself through the ballot- To do 
this they must have a political organization of 
their own to give form to their will. The direct 
object of such an organization is to help them to 
secure control of the powers of government by 
electing members of the working class to office 
and so secure legislation in the interests of the 
working class until such time as the workers may, 
by being in overwhelming control of the govern- 
ment, be able "to alter or abolish it, and to insti- 
tute a new government, laying its foundation on 
such principles, and organizing its power in such 
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect 
their safety and happiness" — in short, to work for 
the abolition of capitalism, by legislation — if that be 
permitted. And in all this, the Negro, who feels 
most fiercely the deep damnation of the capitalist 
system, can help- 

The Negro and Industrial Socialism. 
But even the voteless proletarian can in a 

28 



SOCIALISM AND THE NEGRO 



measure help toward the final abolition of the cap- 
italist system. For they too have labor power— 
which they can be taught to withhold. They can 
do this by organizing themselves at the point of 
production. By means of such organization they 
can work to shorten the hours of labor, to raise 
wages, to secure an ever-increasing share of the 
product of their toil. They can enact and enforce 
laws for the protection of labor and they can do 
this at the point of production, as was done by the 
Western Federation of Miners in the matter of the 
eight-hour law, which they established without the 
aid of the legislatures or the courts. All this in- 
volves a progressive control of the tools of produc- 
tion and a progressive expropriation of the capita- 
list class. And in all this the Negro can help- So 
far, they are unorganized on the industrial field, 
but industrial unionism beckons to them as _ to 
others, and the consequent program of the Social- 
ist party for the Negro in the south can be based 
upon this fact. 



o 



29 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 



The African slave-trade was born of the de- 
sire of certain Europeans to acquire wealth without 
working. It was to fill the need for a cheap labor 
supply in developing new territory that Negro 
slaves were first brought to the western world by 
the Spanish, Dutch, and English during the 16th 
and 17th centuries. Contact of white with black 
was thus established on the basis of the economic 
subjection of the one to the other. This subjection 
extended to every sphere of life, physical, mental 
and social. Out of this contact there arose certain 
definite relations and consequent problems of ad- 
justment. It is the sum of these relations which 
we (rightly or wrongly) describe as the Negro 
Problem. 

Unfortunately, the spell of mere words is still 
very strong, and when people speak of the Negro 
Problem they carry over into the discussion a cer- 
tain mental attitude derived from the original 
meaning of the word, Problem. In arithmetic, a 
sum to be worked out ; in chemistry, to find by 
experiment a certain re-agent ; in geography, to 
chart a puzzling current — all these are problems 
in the primary sense, and all these involve the idea 
of solution by him who approaches them. That is 
to say, they can be solved by thinking. And those 
who think loosely call up this idea of solution by 
thinking whenever they see the word "problem"- 
So we have been pestered with this, that, and the 

30 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 



other "solution" of the Negro problem. Therefore, 
it is well to bear in mind that a race problem is 
always the sum of the relations between two or 
more races in a state of friction. 

Because when we understand this we are in a 
fair way to find that these relations are not to be 
explained on the basis of the thinking or feeling 
of either party. They must be interpreted in terms 
of human relations and in the order in which human 
relations are established: (i) economic, (2) social, 
(3) political and (4) civic. So understood, a know- 
ledge of the historical conditions under which these 
relations developed is seen to be of the greatest 
value in understanding the problem. For this is all 
that our intellects can do in the case of a racial 
problem — to help us to understand. The actual 
work of adjustment must be fought out or worked 
out ; becomes, that is to say, a struggle to be set- 
tled by the contending races with forces more com- 
plex than the purely intellectual ones of argument 
and proof. Let us first consider, then, the condi- 
tions under which the relations between the black 
and white races were established in America- 

During the period of colonization the land of 
America was granted by European kings to cer- 
tain gentlemen who had no intention of working 
with the hands. Nevertheless working with the 
hands was the only method of extracting that 
wealth which was the object of their ownership, 
it was necessary, then, to obtain a supply of those 
persons who could do this work for them ; and to 

31 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 

insure this, it was imperative that these persons 
should not own land themselves : they must be a 

permanently landless class ; since it was unthink- 
able then as now that one should work the land of 
others for a part of the fruits if he could work 
his own land for all of the fruits- So there was 
begun in America the process of establishing such 
a class. Confining ourselves to the territory which 
became the United States, we may say that the 
first attempt was made to enslave the Indians, and 
when this failed to work, white people were im- 
ported from Europe as chattel slaves. All through 
the colonial period this importation continued with 
its consequent effects on the social and political 
life of the colonies. Most people will be surprised 
to learn that the first Fugitive Slave Law was 
framed, not in the south, but in the north, and was 
made not for black but for white laborers. 
This was the Massachusetts act of 1630 "Respect- 
ing Masters, Servants and Laborers". A reading 
of this one act would destroy all those pretty illu- 
sions about "our fathers and Freedom" which we 
get from the official fairy tales — I mean the school 
histories. 

Side by side with the economic subjection of 
white men there grew up the economic subjection 
of black men, and for the same reason. These were 
of alien blood — and cheaper. Therefore, the Afri- 
can slave trade outgrew the European slave trade, 
although the latter continued, in a lessening de- 
gree, down to the third or fourth decade of the 

32 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 



19th century- Negroes were brought here to work, 
to be exploited ; and they were allowed no illusions 
as to the reason for their being here. Those white 
men who owned the land brought them here to ex- 
tract the wealth which was in the land. The white 
aristocrat did not buy black slaves because he had 
a special hatred or contempt for anything black, 
nor because he believed that Negroes were inferior 
to white people- On the contrary he bought them 
precisely because, as working cattle, they were 
superior to whites. 

Being of alien blood, these black people were 
outside of the social and political system to which 
they were introduced and, quite naturally, beyond 
the range of such sympathies as helped to soften 
the hard brutalities of the system. They were, 
from the beginning, more ruthlessly exploited than 
the white workers. Thus they had their place 
made for them — at the bottom. 

Now it is a social law — not yet proclaimed by 
our college sociologists — that whenever a certain 
social arrangement is beneficial to any class in a 
society, that class soon develops the pyschology of 
its own advantage and creates insensibly the ethics 
which will justify that social arrangement. Men 
to whom the vicarious labor of slaves meant cul- 
ture and refinement, wealth, leisure and education, 
naturally came — without any self-deception, to see 
that slavery was right. As Professor Loria points 
out, there is an economic basis to moral transfor- 
mations in any society which is built on vicarious 

33 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 



production- 

We turn now to the resulting conditions of the 
slaves. They were at the bottom, the most brut- 
ally exploited and, therefore, the most despised 
section of the laboring class. For it is a conse- 
quent of the law stated above that those who are 
exploited must needs be despised by those who ex- 
ploit them- This mental attitude of the superior 
class (which makes the laws of that society in 
which it is dominant) will naturally find its expres- 
sion in those actions by which they esablish their 
relations to the inferior class. And whenever any- 
one is to be kicked it is usually the man farthest 
down who gets it, because he is most contiguous 
to the foot. So the Negro having been given a 
place at the bottom in the economic life of the na- 
tion, came to occupy naturally the place at the bot- 
tom in the nation's thinking. I say, the nation's 
advisedly ; because the dominant ideas of any so- 
ciety which is already divided into classes are as a 
rule the ideas preservative of the existing arrange- 
ments. But since those arrangements include a 
class on top, the dominant ideas will generally co- 
incide with the interest of that class. The ethics 
of its own advantage, then, will be diffused by that 
class throughout that society — will be, if need arise 
imposed upon the other classes, since every ruling 
class has always controlled the public instruments 
for the diffusion of ideas. 

In this way the slave-holding section of the 
dominant class in America first diffused its own 

34 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 



necessary contempt for the Negro among the other 
(Sections of the ruling class, and the ideas of this 
•class as a whole became through the agency of 
press, pulpit and platform, the ideas of "the Ameri- 
can People" on the Negro- 

In further application of the materialistic 
methed to this subject, it is curious and interesting 
to note how the southern attitude toward the Negro 
changed with the changing industrial system. 
When the wasteful agricultural methods of chattel 
slavery had exhausted the soil of the south and no 
new land loomed up on the horizon of the system, 
slavery began to decay. The planters of that section 
settled down into the patriarchal type of family 
relations with their slaves, who were then simply 
a means of keeping the master's hands free from 
the contamination of work and not a means of 
ever-increasing profits- Slavery was then in a fair 
way to die of its own weight. But with the inven- 
tion of Whitney's cotton-gin, which enabled one 
man to do the work of three hundred, cotton came 
to the front as the chief agricultural staple in 
America. The black slave became a source of in- 
creasing revenue as a fertilizer of capital. The 
idyllic relations of the preceding forty years came 
to a sudden end. Increased profits demanded in- 
creased exploitation and the ethics of advantage 
dictated the despising of the Negro. 

De Bow's Review, the great organ of southern 
opinion, appeared, and in serious scientific articles 
maintained the proposition that the Negro was not 

35 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 



a man but a beast. About that time (and conform- 
ably to that opinion) the practice was begun of 
spelling the word, Negro, with a small "n" — a prac- 
tice still current in America, even in the socialist 
press. 

In the meanwhile, the system of industrial pro- 
duction known as the machine system developed in 
the north-The factory proletariat whose condition 
determined that of the other northern workers 
could fertilize capital more rapidly and cheaply 
than the slaves. This form of production (and its 
products) came into competition with the slave 
system and the tremendous conflict reflected itself 
upon the political field as a struggle for the re- 
striction of slavery within its original bounds. The 
Louisiana Purchase, the annexation of Texas, the 
Missouri Compromise, the Dred Scot Decision, the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, — all these were political ep- 
isodes in the competition between the two main 
sections of the dominant class ; and in the conflict 
each used the army, the navy, the executive, the 
courts and the legislature to strengthen its own 
position- 
When the business interests of the north had 
definitely captured the powers of government in 
the general election of i860, the southerners se- 
ceeded because they knew too well what govern- 
mental power was generally used for. They want- 
ed a government which would be the political re- 
flex of their own economic dominance. One can 

36 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 

see now why the northern statesmen like Lincoln 
insisted that the preservation of the Union was the 
paramount issue and not the freedom of slaves. 
Indeed, Lincoln punished those officers of the army 
who in the early days of the war dared to act upon 
that assumption. And not all the arguments of 
Greeley, Conway and Governor Andrews could 
make any change in his attitude. Not until he 
saw that it was expedient "as a war measure" did 
he issue the "Emancipation Proclamation" which 
brought 187,000 Negro soldiers into the northern 
army. 

Emancipation gave to the Negroes a new ec- 
onomic status — the status of free wage-laborers, 
competing with other wage-laborers for work. 
They who had worked to create wealth for others 
were now turned loose without wealth or land to 
shift for themeselves in a world already hostile to 
them- The mental attitude of the white south ha<^ 
been shaped by three centuries of slavery and was 
hard to get rid of. It was difficult for them to 
think of black labor under any form but that of 
slavery and they naturally turned to compulsion as 
the proper mode of obtaining work from their for- 
mer slaves. This attitude was well expressed in 
the Black Codes of the southern states during the 
fall and winter of 1865-66. As soon as the end of 
the hostilities gave them a free hand at home they 
began to give legislative expression to the new con- 
ditions. They framed new constitutions and new 
laws. "But it was seen that the Negro had no 

37 



THE REAL NEGRO PROB LEM 

privilege of voting in the first instance, and it was 
not to be expected that the right would be accord- 
ed him under the new state constitutions ; no guar- 
antee that justice should be done him was exacted. 
These new constitutions were formed, the legisla- 
tures met, laws were made, senators and represent- 
atives to Congress were chosen; but the Negro was 
not only not admitted to any participation in the 
government, but the new legislatures shocked the 
northern sence of justice by the cruel and revenge- 
ful laws which they enacted. The barbarity of the 
most odious slave-code was, under various dis- 
guises, applied to the Negro in his new condition 
of freedom". Even before the resentment of the 
national legislature had taken form, the Ku-Klux 
Klan, the Knights of the White Camelias, the So- 
ciety of the Pale Faces, and other bands of organ- 
ized representatives of culture had begun to do 
their bloody work of terrorizing Negroes into ec- 
onomic and social subjection. And all this before 
any steps had been taken to extend the suffrage to 
Negroes. 

When the northerners investigated these con- 
ditions they met with such fierce and unreasoning 
hostility on the part of the south that they found 
it necessary to arm the Negro with the ballot in 
his own defense- And yet, professional southern- 
ers like Tom Dixon, Tom Watson, Ben Tillman 
Vardaman and Blease pretend to their ignorant or 
forgetful countrymen that the present attitude of 
the south was caused in the first instance by a re- 
action against "Negro domination", social and po- 

38 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 

litical which the north had forced upon it. 

The subsequent developments can not be ex- 
plained by those amiable enthusiasts who see in 
the ''freedom" of Negroes an act of genuine hu- 
manitarianism on the part of the north. For, a f tex- 
tile northern business-men had secured the govern- 
ment — and their thousands of miles of railroad- 
grants — they promptly dropped the mask of hu- 
manitarian hypocrisy, and left the Negroes to shift 
for themselves- During the disputed count of the 
votes in the Hayes-Tilden electoral contest in 1877 
a deal was arranged by which the northerners 
agreed to withdraw the army which protected the 
Negroes, newly-granted franchise in the south, on 
condition that the southerners should concede the 
election to Hayes. The new industrial order want- 
ed above all things to retain control of the govern- 
iment which it had captured during the war, and 
upon the altar of this necessity it sacrificed the 
Negro in the south, just as Lincoln had done in the 
early days of the war. From that time the sup- 
pression of the Negro vote, the growth of "Jim 
Crow" legislation, lynching and segregation have 
continued with the continuing consent of Repub- 
lican congressman, presidents and supreme courts. 
And through it all, Negro "leaders" like Mr. Wash- 
ington have found it very much worth their while 
to administer anodynes both to the Negro and the 
-'■•' Lion, to reconcile the one to a bastard democ- 
racy and the other to a mutilated manhood. 

It would be well to trace here the nature of 

39 



THE REAL NEGRO PROBLEM 

the economic changes which have given certain 
new and malignant features to the relations be- 
tween black and white in Amercia. The effect up- 
on the free laborers of the sudden influx of black 
competitors in the labor-market ; the consequent 
attitude of the labor-unions ; the political and so- 
cial reflex of all this, with the vestiges of the old, 
re-developing under the new conditions — all these 
(are parts of the problem. But space will not permit, 
and these considerations will be taken up in a sec- 
ond paper. Yet I may indicate here the gist of my 
conclusions by quoting the words of a well-known 
Southerner, the Rev. Quincy Ewing- "The race 
problem — is not that the Negro is what he is in 
relation to the white man — the white man's infer- 
ior — but this, rather : How to keep him what he is 
jn relation to the white man ; how to prevent his 
lever achieving or becoming that which would just- 
ify the belief on his part, or on the part of other 
people, that he and the white man stand on com- 
mon human ground." 

The economic necessities of a system of vic- 
arious production led to the creation of a racial 
h.bor-caste ; the social adjustment consequent upon 
this and upon its development created a social 
sentiment inimical to this class, and its continuance 
requires a continuance of this sentiment in our so- 
ciety ; this is the pivotal fact. And the unavoid- 
able conclusion is, that when this system of vic- 
arious production disappears, the problem which is 
its consequence will disappear also — and not till 
then, in spite of all the culture, individual or col- 
lective, which that class may achieve. 

40 



ON A CERTAIN 

CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 

It would be a difficult task to name one line of 
intellectual endeavor among white men in America, 
in which the American Negro has not taken his 
part. Yet it is a striking fact that the racial attitude 
has been dominantly conservative. Radicalism does 
not yet register to any noticeable extent the contri- 
butions of our race in this country. In theological 
criticism, religious dissent, social and political 
heresies such as Single Tax, Socialism, Anarchism 
— in most of the movements arising from the re- 
construction made necessary by the great body of 
that new knowledge which the last two centuries 
gave us — the Negro in America has taken no part. 
And today our sociologists and economists still re- 
strict themselves to the compilation of tables of 
statistics in proof of Negro progress. Our scholars 
are still expressing the intellectual viewpoints of 
the eighteenth century. The glimmer of a change is 
perceptible only in some of the younger men like 
Locke of Howard University and James C. Waters, 

It is easy to account for this. Christian Amer- 
ica created the color line ; and all the great cur- 
rents of critical opinion, from the eighteenth cen- 
tury to our time, have found the great barrier 
impassible and well-nigh impervious. Behind the 
color line one has to think perpetually of the color 
line, and most of those who grow up behind it 
can think of nothing else. Even when one essays 
to think of other things, that thinking is tinged 
with the shades of the surrounding atmosphere. 

41 



CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 



Besides, when we consider what Negro educa- 
tion is to-day when we remember that in certain 
southern counties the munificent sum of 58 cents 
is spent for the annual education of a Negro child; 
that the "great leader" of his race decries "higher" 
education for them ; that Negro boys who get as 
far as "college" must first surmount tremendous 
special obstacles — we will cease to wonder at the 
dearth of thinkers who are radical on other than 
racial matters. 

Yet, it should seem that Negroes, of all Ameri- 
cans, would be found in the Freethought fold, 
since they have suffered more than any other class 
of Americans from the dubious blessings of Chris- 
tianity. It has been well said that the two great 
instruments for the propagation of race prejudice 
in America are the Associated Press and the Chris- 
tian Church. This is quite true. Historically, it 
was the name of religion that cloaked the begin- 
nings of slavery on the soil of America, and but- 
tressed its continuance. The church saw to it that 
the religion taught to slaves should stress the ser- 
vile virtues of subservience and content, and these 
things have bitten deeply into the souls of black 
folk. True, the treasured music of these darker 
millions preserves, here and there, the note of 
stifled rebellion; but this was in spite of religion — 
not because of it. Besides, such of their "sorrow- 
songs" as have this note in them were brutally 
banned by their masters, and driven to the pur- 
lieus of the plantation, there to be sung in secret, 

42 



CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 



And all through the dark days of slavery, it was 
the Bible that constituted the divine sanction of 
this "peculiar institution." "Cursed be Canaan," 
"Servants obey your masters" and similar texts 
were the best that the slaveholders'" Bible could 
give of consolation to the brothers in black, while, 
for the rest, teaching them to read was made a 
crime so that whatever of social dynamite there 
might be in certain parts of the book, might not 
come near their minds. 

Lowell, in his "Biglow Papers," has given a 
caustic but correct summary of the Christian slave- 
holders' theology in regard to the slavery of black 
working-people : 
"All things wuz gin to man for's use, his sarvice an' de- 

An' don't the Greek an' Hebrew words that mean a man 
mean white? 

Ain't it belittlin' the good book in all its proudes' features 

To think 't wuz wrote for black an' brown an' 'lasses-col- 
ored creatures, 

Thet couldn' read it ef they would — nor ain't by lor allowed 
to, 

But ought to take v/ut we think suits their naturs, an' be 

proud to? 

* * * * 

Where'd their soles go ter, I'd like to know, ef we should 

let 'em ketch 
Freeknowledgism an' Fourierism an' Speritoolism an' 

sech?" 

When the fight for the abolition of slavery was 
on, the Christian church, not content with quot- 
ing scripture, gagged the mouths of such of their 
adherents as dared to protest against the accursed 

43 



CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 

thing, penalized their open advocacy of abolition, 
and opposed all the men like Garrison, Lovejoy, 
Phillips and John Brown, who fought on behalf of 
the Negro slave. The detailed instances and proofs 
are given in the last chapter of "A Short History 
of the Inquisition," wherein the work shows the 
relation of the church and slavery. 

Yet the church among the Negroes today ex- 
erts a more powerful influence than anything else 
in the sphere of ideas. Nietzsche's contention that 
the ethics of Christianity are the slave's ethics 
would seem to be justified in this instance. Show me 
a population that is deeply religious, and I will 
show you a servile population, content with whips 
and chains, contumely and the gibbet, content to 
eat the bread of sorrow and drink the waters of 
affliction. 

The present condition of the Negroes of 
America is a touching bit of testimony to the truth 
of this assertion. Here in America the spirit of 
the Negro has been transformed by three centuries 
of subjection, physical and mental, so that they 
have even glorified the fact of subjection and 
subservience. How many Negro speakers have I 
not heard vaunting the fact that when in the dark 
days of the South the Northern armies had the 
Southern aristocracy by the throat, there was no 
Negro uprising to make their masters pay for the 
systematic raping of Negro women and the inhu- 
man cruelties perpetrated on Negro men. And yet 
the sole reason for this "forbearance" is to be 

44 



CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 



found in the fact that their spirits had been com- 
pletely crushed by the system of slavery. And to 
accomplish this, Christianity— the Christianity of 
their masters — was the most effective instrument. 

A recent writer, Mr. E. B. Putnam-Weale, in his 
book, "The Conflict of Color," has quite naively 
disclosed the fact that white people are well aware 
of this aspect of Christianity and use it for their 
own ends. Mr. Putnam-Weale makes no pretense 
of believing in the Christian myth himself, but 
he wants it taught to the Negroes ; and comparing it 
with Islam, he finds it a more efficient instrument 
of racial subjugation. The Mohammedan, he finds, 
preaches the equality of all true believers — and 
lives up to it. The white Christian preaches the 
brotherhood of man, but wants "niggers" to sit in 
the rear pews, to ride in "Jim Crow" cars, and 
generally to "keep in their place." He presents 
this aspect of the case under the caption of "The 
Black Samson and the White Delilah," and, with 
less fear than an angel, frankly advises the whit^ 
Lords of Empire not so much to civilize as to 
christianize Africa, so that Deliah's work may be 
well done. 

Here in America her work has been well done ; 
and I fear that many years must pass before the 
leaders of thought among my people in this coun- 
try contribute many representatives to the cause o : 
Freethought. Just now, there are a few Negro 
Agnostics in New York and Boston, but these are 
generally found to be West Indians from the 

45 



CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 

French, Spanish, and English islands. The Cuban 
and Porto Rican cigar-makers are notorious In- 
fidels, due to their acquaintance with the bigotry, 
ignorance and immorality of the Catholic priest- 
hood in their native islands. Here and there one 
finds a Negro-American who is reputed to have Ag- 
nostic tendencies ; but these are seldom, if ever, 
openly avowed. I can hardly find it in my heart to 
blame them, for I know the tremendous weight of 
the social proscription which it is possible to bring 
to bear upon those who dare defy the idols of our 
tribe. For those who live by the people must needs 
be careful of the people's gods ; and 

"An up-to-date statesmen has to be on his guard, 

If he must have beliefs not to b'lieve 'em too hard." 

Myself, I am inclined to believe that freedom 
of thought must come from freedom of circum- 
stance; and so long as our "leaders" are dependent 
on the favor of our masses for their livelihood, just 
so long will they express the thought of the masses, 
which of itself may be a good thing or a bad ac- 
cording to the circumstances of the particular case 
Still there is a terrible truth in Kipling's modern 
version of Job's sarcastic bit of criticism : 

"No doubt but ye are the people — your throne is above the 

King's, 
Whoso speaks in your presence must say acceptable 

things ; 
Bowing the head in worship, bending the knee in fear — 
Bringing the word well-smoothen — such as a King should 

hear.'' 

And until this rising generation of Negroes can 
shake off the trammels of such time-serving lead- 

46 



CONSERVATISM IN NEGROES 



ers as Mr. Washington, and attain the level of that 
"higher education" against which he solidly sets 
his "face; until they, too, shall have entered into the 
•intellectual heritage of the last two hundred years, 
there can be little hope of a change in this respect. 



• r> 



47 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 

In the good old days "when cotton was king", 
chattel-slavery was a flourishing institution. Not 
only the people who profited by the system, but 
most others — even those who were the sufferers — 
thought that this was really a "law of nature", that 
it couldn't be otherwise. Nevertheless, chattel 
slavery has gone. But while it lasted this was its 
essence : Certain human beings were compelled to 
labor and the wealth which their labor produced 
went, not to them, but to certain other human be- 
ings who did not labor at all but lolled in luxury on 
the labor of their slaves. 

To-day, fellow-sufferers, they tell us that 
we are free. But are we? If you will think 
for a moment you will see that we are not 
free at all. We have simply changed one form 
of slavery for another. Then it was chattel-slav- 
ery, now it is wage-slavery. For that which was 
the essence of chattel-slavery is the essence of 
wage slavery. It is only a difference in form. 
The chattel-slave was compelled to work by physi- 
cal force ; the wage-slave is compelled to work by 
starvation. The product of the chattel-slave's la- 
bor was taken by his master; the product of the 
wage-slave's labor is taken by the employer. 

The United StatesGovernmenthasmadeastudy 
of the wealth producing power of the wage-slaves, 
and has shown that the average worker produces 
$2,451 a year. The government has also made a 
study of wages in the U. S. which shows that the 
average worker gets $437 a year. This means that 

48 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 



the average employer takes away from the average 
wage-slave $2,014 a year. In the good old days the 
master took away the wealth produced by the slave 
in the simplest form ; today he takes it away in the 
form of profits. But in one respect the wage-slave 
is worse off than the chattel slave. Under chattel 
slavery the master owned the man and the land ; he 
had to feed and clothe the man. Under wage- 
slavery the man feeds and clothes himself. Under 
chattel slavery it was to the interest of the owner 
to give the slave work and to keep him from starv- 
ing to death. Under wage-slavery, if the man goes 
out of work the employer doesn't care ; that is no 
loss to him ; and if the man dies there are millions 
of others eager to take his place, because, as I said 
before, they must either work for him or starve. 
There is one very striking parallel between the two 
cases. To-day there are many people who say that 
this system is divinely appointed — is a law of nature 
— just as they said the same thing of chattel slavery. 
Well, there are millions of workers who say that it 
is wrong. Under chattle-slavery black workers 
were robbed; under wage-slavery all the workers 
are robbed. The Socialist Party says that this 
robbing shall cease ; that no worker black or white 
shall be exploited for profit. And it says, further, 
that there is one sure and certain way of putting an 
end to the system and that is by working for the 
success of Socialism. 

But, before I tell you just how Socialism pro- 
poses to do this, let me say a word about the Civil 

49 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 



War which put an end to chattel-slavery. Now, I 
know that certain people have taught you to believe 
that the Civil War was fought to free the slaves. 
But it isn't true, at all, and only very ignorant peo- 
ple hold that opinion nowadays. If you will read 
the Emancipation Proclamation carefully you will 
see that it wasn't for love of the slave that the 
slaves were freed. You will see that this was done, 
'"as a fit and neccesary war-measure for suitress- 
<ing said rebellion." If you will read Lincoln's let- 
ter to Horrace Greeley (August 22 nd 1862) you 
will find this sentence: My paramount object in this 
struggle is to save the Union and is not either to 
save or destroy slavery." Now I will tell you 
briefly how "this struggle" came about. I konw 
that my explanation is not the one which you have 
been taught. But, no matter; it happens to be 
true. This was the way of it: In the South there 
had grown up one system of exploiting the laborer. 
That was chattel-slavery. The money-Kings of 
that section whom we will call capitalists, for short, 
were naturally fond of their own system. In the 
North the capitalists had another system of which 
they were equally., fond. That was wage-slavery. 
The Southern capitalists found that it was neces- 
sary to extend their system ; so we had the Mexican 
War, and they got Texas. Then, as fast as new ter- 
ritory was opened they would rush to occupy it 
with the*ir system and so shut out the Northern 
system. Of course, the Northern capitalists would 
itry to. get their system into the new territory also ; 
■so we had the long struggle over Kansas and Ne- 

50 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 



braska. These two systems were then in open 
co .ition and it came to be seen that one or the 

her had to give in; that both of them couldn't 
exist in the same country; that "a house divided 
list itself cannot stand"; that "this nation can- 
.not exisl half-slave and half-free." Then people 
began to talk of "the impending crisis" ; of "the ir- 
repressible conflict." Then, when Lincoln was 
elected in 1859, the southern capitalists saw that 
their system was doomed. They wished to pre- 
serve it ; so they seceded and tried to make of 

emselves a separate nation in which their system 
of robbing the worker shold be the only one. But 
the Northern capitalists said, "Nix! Our system 
Isb be the only system." So they went to war 
"to save the Union" — for their system of robbing 
the workers. And that's the gist of the whole 
story. 

"But", you will say, "didn't they go to war 
on account of John Brown and Wendell Phillips 
and William Lloyd Garrison and Charles Sumner?" 
Not on your life, they didn't. If you will read the 
newspapers of that time you will see that they 
tried to lynch Garrison in Boston ; they ostracized 
Wendell Phillips ; they sneered at Sumner and 
damned John Brown. Why, nice, good, Christian 
people told them they were crazy — just as some of 
them tell Socialists now — and the anti-slavery or- 
to s couldn't get the use of a church in New York 
either for love or for money. No, indeed. These 
men were grand old heroes — but no war was fought 

51 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 



on their account. The older system of chattle- 
slavery simply broke down to make way for the 
present system of wage-slavery, which pays better. 
Pays the capitalist, I mean. 

Under the old system the capitalist owned the 
man ; today he own the tools with which the man 
must work. These tools are the factories, the 
mines, and the machines. The system that owns 
them owns you and me and all the rest of us, black, 
white, brown, red, and yellow. We can't live un- 
less we have access to these tools, and our masters, 
the capitalists, see to it that we are separated from 
what we make by using these things, except so 
much as is necessary to keep us alive that we may 
be able to make more — for them. This little bit is 
called wages. They wouldn't give us even that if 
they thought that we could live without it. In the 
good old days the chattel-slave would be fastened 
with a chain if they thougt that he might escape. 
Today no chain is neccesary to bind us to the tools. 
We are as free as air. Of course. We are free to 
starve. And that chain of the-fear-of-starvation 
binds us to the tools owned by the capitalist as 
firmly as any iron chain ever did. And this system 
doesn't care whether the slaves who are bound in 
this new way are white or black. To the capitalist 
system all workers are equal — in so far as they have 
a stomach. 

Now the one great fact for the Negro in Amer- 
ica today is Race Prejudice. The great labor prob- 
lem with which all working-people are faced is 

52 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 

made harder for black working.-people by the ad- 
dition of a race problem. I want to show you how 
one grows out of the other and how, at bottom, 
they are both the same thing. In other words, I 
want you to see the economic reason for race- 
prejudice. 

In the first place, do you know that the 
most rabid, Negro-hating, southern aristocrat has 
not the slightest objection to sleeping in the same 
house with a Negro — if that Negro sleeps there as 
his servant? He doesn't care if his food is pre- 
pared by a Negro cook and handled by a Negro 
waiter before it gets to him ; he will eat it. But if 
a Negro comes into the same public restaurant to 
buy and eat food, then, Oh my!, he gets all het up 
about it. But why? What's the difference? I 
twill tell you. The aristocrat wants the black man 
to feel that he is on a lower level. When he is on 
that level he is "in his place". When he is "in his 
place" he is liked. But he must not be allowed to 
do anything to make him forget that he is on this 
•lower level ; he must be kept " in his place", which 
means the place which the aristocrat wants him to 
keep. You see, the black man carries the memory 
of slavery with him. Everybody knows that the 
slaves were the exploited working-class of the 
South. That put them in a class by themselves, 
down at the bottom, downtrodden, despised, "in- 
ferior." 

Do you begin to see now that Race Prej- 
udice is only another name for Caste Prejudice? 

S3 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 



If our people had never been slaves ; had never been 
exploited workrs, and so, at the bottom of the lad- 
der, there would be no prejudice against them now. 
In every case where there has been a downtrodden 
class of workers at the bottom, that class has been 
despised by the class that lived by their labor. Do 
you doubt it ? Then look at the facts. If you had 
picked up a daily paper in New York in 1848 you 
would have found at the end of many an advertise- 
ment for butler, coachman, lady's maid, clerk or 
book-keeper these words : "No Irish need apply." 
There was a race-prejudice aginst the Irish then, 
because most of the manual unskilled laborers were 
Irish. They were at the bottom, exploited and de- 
spised. But they have changed things since. Be- 
ginning in the seventies when Jewish laborers be- 
gan to come here from Russia, Austria and Ger- 
many, and lasting even to our own day, there has 
been race-prejudice against the Jews. And today 
when the Italian has taken the place which the 
Irish laborer vacated — at the bottoh — he, too, comes 
in for his share of this prejudice. In every one of 
these cases it was the condition of the people — at 
the bottom as despised, exploited, wage-slaves — 
that was responsible for the race-prejudice. And it 
is just so in the black man's case, with this differ- 
ence : that his color marks what he once was, and 
even though he should wear a dress suit every eve- 
ning and own an automobile or a farm he can al- 
ways be picked out and reminded. 

Now, under the present system, exploiting the 
wage-slave is respectable. I have already shown 

54 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 



you that wherever the worker is exploited he is 
despised. So you will see that despising the wage- 
slave is quite fashionable. You may recall the 
name of the great capitalist who said, "the public 
be damned." He was only a little more outspoken 
than the rest of his class. As long as the present 
system continues, the workers will be despised; as 
long as the workers are despised, the black men 
will be despised, robbed and murdered, because 
they are least able to defend themselves. Now ask 
yourself whether you haven't a very special inter- 
est in changing the present system. 

Of course, you will ask : "But haven't white 
working people race-prejudice too?" Sure, they 
have. Do you konw why? It pays the capitalist 
to keep the workers divided. So he creates and 
keeps alive these prejudices. He gets them to be- 
lieve that their interests are different. Then he 
uses one half of them to club the other half with. 
In Russia when the workingmen demand reform 
the capitalists sic them on the Jews. In America 
they sic them on the Negroes. That makes them 
forget their own condition : as long as they can be 
made to look down upon another class. "Rut, 
then", you will say, " the average wage-slave must 
be a chump." Sure, he is. That's what the capi- 
talist counts on. And Socialism is working to 
educate the workers to see this and to unite them 
in doing away with the present system. 

Socialism stands for the emancipation of the 
wage-slaves. Are you a wage-slave? Do you want 

55 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 

to be emancipated? Then join hands with the 
Socialists. Hear what they have to say. Read 
some of their literature. Get a Socialist leaflet, a 
pamphlet, or, better still, a book. You will be con- 
vinced of two things : that Socialism is right, and 
that it is inevitable. It is right because any order 
of things in which those who work have least while 
those who work them have most, is wrong. It is 
inevitable because a system under which the wealth 
produced by the labor of human hands amounts to 
more than two hundred and twenty billions a year 
while many millions live on the verge of starvation, 
is bound to break down. ' Therefore, if you wish to 
join with the other class — conscious, intelligent 
wage-earners — in putting an end to such a system ; 
if you want to better living conditions for black 
men as well as for white men ; to make this woful 
world of ours a little better for your children and 
your children's children, study Socialism — and 
think and work your way out. 

Twelve years ago Mark Hanna, the Big Boss 
of the Republican Party, made a statement which 
you would do well to consider. After he had made 
McKinley president, he noticed something that 
you may not have noticed yourself. He saw that 
there was no essential difference between the Re- 
publican party and the Democratic party. He 
knew that the same big Wall Street companies 
supplied the campaign funds for each of them. He 
knew that the same money power was buying out 
the men whom you elected, whether you elected 

56 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 



Republicans or Democrats. He saw that very soon 
you and I and the rest of us, black as well as white, 
would come to see it too. And he opened his 
mouth and spake these words: 'The next great 
political battle in this country will be fought, not 
between the Republican and the Democratic parties, 
but between the Republican party and Socialism." 
I will tell you later what that implies. But just 
now, what I should like you to see is this: that 
Senator Hanna realized that Socialism was a seri- 
ous issue. He couldn't afford to pooh-pooh it. 
Neither can any sensible person. The Socialist 
party is the third in point of numbers. It is im- 
portant. What do you know of this party? Have 
you ever read its platform? Read it once, just for 
the sake of fair play — just to show that_ you are 
not afraid to give it a hearing — and you will realize 
why Mark Hanna paid it such a tribute of respect. 

Don't be a baby any longer and listen to the 
stale lies which other people tell you about Social- 
ism. Read the Socialist platform and you will un- 
derstand why some politicians have to tell lies about 
it just the same as they have to tell lies about you. 
They lie about it because they don't want you to 
know what it really is, just as they lie about you 
because they don't want people to know what you 
really are. Every year they feed you with the same 
soft mush around election time to help them to ride 
into power on your votes ; then after election they 
give you Brownsville and lynching bees. Do you 
wonder that General Clarkson, a grandson of the 

57 



WHAT SOCIALISM MEANS TO US 

great abolitionist, when he gave up his job as col- 
lector of the Port of New York, said that he was 
rick of the way in which the Republican party was 
selling you out? The Republican party is always 
engaged in selling you out — or in selling out the 
working people of this country. Do you doubt it ? 
Then ask yourselves why is it that a Republican 
Congress has never said a word or done anything 
about the disfranchisement of nearly three million 
Negro voters in the South? Read the Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitu- 
tion and you will see that the Republican party has 
always had the power to stop it. But just now I 
want to get you interested in the one party that 
strikes at the very root of your trouble and that 
of every workingman in the country — white and 
black alike. I want you to see what is the attitude 
of the Socialist Party toward the American Negro. 
And for that reason I am introducing to you 
the following declarations of the attitude 
made by Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate 
for President, and by other members of the party. 
Compare its straight-forward, uncompromising ut- 
terances with what the other two parties have said 
and done; then look yourself in the face and say 
> h ether it is worth you while to sell your birth- 
right and your future freedom — yes, and that of 
your children and your . children's children — for a 
in ess of political pottage. 



c 



8 



THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 

It is not an easy task to plead in the courts of 
the oppressor against oppression and wrong. It is 
not easy to get the judgement of the white men of 
the world against the white man's injustice to the 
black. But nevertheless the attempt must be made 
and made again until the seared conscience of the 
civilized world's hall throbs with righteous' indigna- 
tion at such outrage. "To sin by silence when we 
should protest makes cowards out of men. The hu- 
man race has climbed on protest. Had no voice 
been raised against injustice, ignorance and lust, 
the Inquisition yet would serve the law and guillo- 
tines decide our least disputes. The few who dare 
must speak and speak again to right the wrongs of 

many." 

The urgent need of speaking out is shown^ by 
the following communication from Mr. J. Ellis 
•Barker of London in an interview given to 
a correspondent of The New York Age and pub- 
lished in that paper on December 291I1 1910. 

"We people in Europe," says Mr. Barker, "do 
not understand the race problem, and we do not 
know the colored people, for the simple reason that 
there are not any colored people in Europe. In 
London, where I live, there are only a few hundred 
colored students whom one does not meet. Before 
J came to the United States my prejudice against 
the colored people was as great as that of any 
Southern planter. My prejudice against your race, 
p.s I believe the prejudice of most white people, was 
due rather to ignorance than to ill-will. I had been 
told in the books and papers published in Europe 
that the colored people were a race of barbarians 

59 



THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 

and savages. I had been told that the colored peo- 
ple were a worthless set of people, dressed in rags, 
working a day or two during the week, and loafing 
during the rest of the time. I was told that the 
colored people were idle, diseased and vicious. So 
I imagined that all of them lived in slums and alleys 
and that the aristocracy of the race consisted of 
the waiters and railway porters. 

I had been told that the colored people only 
played at science; that their doctors and lawyers 
were charlatems. I had been told that the people 
of a mixed race were even worse than pure Ne- 
groes ; that the mulattoes had lost the primitive 
virtues of the Negroes and had acquired all of the 
vices of the whites. A chance encounter with a 
cultured man of color induced me to look into the 
race problem and I was perfectly amazed when I 
discovered how greatly the colored people have 
been libelled and traduced. I have spent a con- 
siderable amount of time with colored people and 
have met many who are highly cultivated. I have 
found that among your race you have excellent 
lawyers, and some of the foremost physicians and 
surgeons. I have been over a large number of 
your elementary and higher grade schools and col- 
leges and over Howard University, and I have ad- 
mired the earnest and resolute determination with 
which your children try to improve their minds and 
to raise themselves. In your night schools I have 
found old men and women, former slaves, who are 
anxious to learn writing and reading. I have been 
to the homes of many colored people and I have 

60 



THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 



found them cosy, comfortable, elegant, and peopled 
by happy and harmonious families. I have come 
to the conclusion that the race is oppressed and 
persecuted and very largely because it is not 
l known." 

But it is not in Europe alone that these bane- 
ful effects of calumny appear. Here in America, 
and even in the south where the bulk of the Ne- 
groes live in the midst of a people who resentfully 
declare that they should be left to deal with the 
Negro because they alone know him — even there 
the notion of the Negro, fostered by the press and 
other agencies of public opinion is as wide of the 
truth as it can be. To illustrate : 

In the March number of Van Norden's Maga- 
zine in 1907 there appeared a symposium on The 
Negro Question. It was composed of expressions 
of opinion from twelve intelligent southerners, and 
was followed by an article by Mr. Booker T. Wash- 
ington. The humor of the think lay in this, that 
these men were Southern college presidents and 
heads of banks, had lived all their lives among Ne- 
groes, and were, by their own words, proved to be 
either woefully or willfully ignorant of what the 
Negro had done and was doing. The mordant ir- 
ony of fate decreed that Mr. Washington should be 
the one to present the facts that changed their 
seeming sapience to Falstaffian farce. The presi- 
dent of Randolph-Macon Woman's College, Va. set 
forth that the Negro will not work regularly, that 
he needs but three dollars a week and, therefore, 
works but three days to get it and "quits work to 

61 



THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPARS 



spend it." The president of Howard College, Ala- 
bama declared that, "My deliberate opinion is that 
the days of the Negro as a fair, honest laborer are 
numbered, and are few at that. He is becoming 
daily more shiftless, more unreliable, more restless, 
less inclined to work steadily." The president of 
the University of South Carolina and the president 
of the North Carolina College of Agriculture and 
Mechanic Arts re-echoed the same doleful dictum 
while the president of the First National Bank of 
Birmingham, Ala. and the president of the Bank of 
Lexington, N. C. declared that it was a mistake to 
grant the rights of citizenship to the Negro and 
that education was a curse to him. The president 
of Guilford College repeated the "lazy, shiftless" 
argument while the president of Randolph-Macon 
College, Va. said, "Reduce their wages so that they 
shall have to work all the time to make a living 
and they will become better workmen or disappear 
in the struggle for existence," repeating in sub- 
stance, the argument of his brother-president of 
the Woman's college. 

Mr. Washington's article did not show any 
sign that it had been written as a reply of any sort. 
But it did show among other things, that the cen- 
sus of 1900 proved that the Negro people owned 
in the very states of these college presidents, "23,- 
383 square miles of territory, an area nearly as 
as that of Holland and Belgium combined"; 
that this represented only a quarter of the farms 
worked by them; that, "after a searching investi- 
gation, I have not been able to find that a single 
graduate of Tuskegee, Hampton or any of the Ne- 

62 

1. 0. a. 



P D 



THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPER 



gro colleges can now be found in the prisons of the 
South ;" that in a single county of Virginia-Glou- 
cester Co. — Negroes were paying taxes on land 
valued at 88 million dollars and on buildings as- 
sessed at 80 millions, and all this on the soil whei e 
they had been slaves forty years before. 

Is not this eloquent of the value of American 
opinion on the American Negro as given in the 
American press? And the question suggested is, 
whether such statements are published in ignorance 
or ill-will ? In either case it is equally damnatory. 

In December 1907 Professor R. R. Wright, Jr., 
an eminent Negro sociologist, published in McGirt's 
Magazine an article on ''The Newspapers and the 
Negro", showing how the Negro is being "done" 
by headlines and other newspaper devices. The 
Horizon, at that time the most brilliant Negro 
prodical, dealt with the subject in its issue for 
April 1908. Under the caption, "The Color Line in 
the Press Dispatches", it quoted approvingly these 
words of a Socialist paper — The Appeal to Reason 
— "The hand that fakes the Associated Press is the 
hand that rules the world." European readers who 
are acquainted with the occasional diversions of 
Reuter's Hong Kong and Shanghai correspondents 
will appreciate the point. 

The Horizon was constrained to refer to the 
matter again in its August issue. In both in- 
stances specific cases were cited and proof given. 
Since that time the need of some formal protest 
has been growing in the minds of all those thinking 
Negroes who are not compelled to "crook the preg- 

63 



THE NEGRO AND THE NEWSPAPERS 



nant hinges of the Knee" ; and it has grown largely 
because the practices complained of have grown to 
ialarming proportions. 

The newspapers of this country have many 
crimes to answer for. They feature our 
criminals in bold head lines : our sub- 
stantial men when noticed at all are relegated to 
the agate type division. Their methods, whether 
they obtain through set purpose or through care- 
lessness, constantly appeal to the putrid passion of 
race hatred. They cause rapine to break loose by 
nurturing rancor. They help create untold sorrow. 
They are week-kneed and apologizing when the 
hour is bloody. 

But how can such a protest be effectively put? 
Though Truth come hot on the heels of Falsehood 
it could not quite undo its devil's work. And the 
detractors of the weak and helpless are well aware 
of this. 

But Truth in the Negro's case is not even un- 
leashed. Truth, in fact, is chained up and well 
guarded, and it is this terrible task of setting 
Truth free that the Negro must essay in the very 
teeth of the American press. It is not an easy task 
to voice an adequate protest, for it needs the wid- 
est publicity. And since prejudice will oppose, it 
needs prestige also. Any such effort must feel it- 
self feeble, and yet it must be made. 



64 



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